1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sample dispensing apparatus for use in an analyzer in which a sample and a reagent are mixed with each other to carry out qualitative/quantitative analysis of a particular ingredient in the sample, and to an automatic analyzer including the sample dispensing apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a sample dispensing apparatus with a high sampling (pipetting) capability per hour, and to an automatic analyzer including the sample dispensing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Taking as an example a medical automatic analyzer used for analyzing particular ingredients in living body samples, such as blood and urine, the medical automatic analyzer is essential for carrying out analysis with high efficiency in, e.g., large-, medium- and small-scaled hospitals handling a large number of patients, and a clinic center carrying out analysis under contract with those hospitals or doctor's offices.
In that type of automatic analyzer, it is demanded that the analyzer is more compact, is able to perform more kinds of analysis, and has a higher processing speed. To satisfy those demands, various kinds of automatic analyzers have been proposed so far.
One measure for increasing the processing speed is to increase a sampling speed. Patent Reference 1, JP,A 3-140869, discloses an automatic chemical analyzer including a sample dispensing mechanism wherein two sampling nozzles are provided such that the sampling nozzles are able to carry out sampling from one sample container to two reaction cuvettes at different timings.
Also, Patent Reference 2, JP,A 2001-66316, discloses a sample dispensing apparatus wherein one sampling arm is provided with a plurality of sampling nozzles, and the sampling nozzles can be controlled to discharge samples independently of each other.